


Free Willy

by oddishly



Series: goldfish [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-18
Updated: 2012-05-18
Packaged: 2017-11-05 14:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/407350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oddishly/pseuds/oddishly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You and me and the fish makes three.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Free Willy

**Author's Note:**

> Written for silverbullets 2012, for lazy-daze's prompt _take me out_. (Reposted because I managed to delete the first one, sigh.)

Sam wants them to get a cat.

A _cat_ , for fuck's sake.

Dean leans on his elbows on the kitchen table to stare him down.

"Never mind," says Sam.

*

Dean learned better than to trust to hope a long time ago. But he had hoped that would be the last of it.

He's on his knees in the bedroom when Sam gets home from work two days later, measuring along the wall for Sam's bookshelf. Sam doesn't have any of his own books any more, lost them all along the way, but now he works four mornings a week in a library. He's trying to turn their house into an offset library. Dean would say he's resisting admirably, but sometimes you just gotta give in to the cold, hard facts of the matter, like how he's right now on his knees with a bracket in one hand and measuring tape in the other.

"Hey," says Sam as he walks into the room with Dean. It's sunny out and he's taken to running to and from work, and Dean can smell him from here. He breathes it in with the pine.

"This where you want your shelf?" he asks. "Higher? On the other wall?" Dean doesn't want to put the shelf on the other wall. The other wall is on Sam's side and there's a chair under the window that Dean doesn't want to have to move.

"That's good," says Sam, so Dean puts down the bracket and picks up a pencil to mark the spot.

Shelf fitted and Sam still in the shower, Dean traipses downstairs with his tools and a mind for a beer, now Sam's back. Another beer. Maybe he'll go outside for a bit, persuade Sam to bring his books out and read beside him. Dean could go for a nap in the sun.

He doesn't get past the beer. On the kitchen table is a clear plastic bag, full of water and tied at the top with an elastic band, and inside that is a goldfish, darting around the bag like a lunatic. A lunatic goldfish. 

Dean cracks open his beer and leans against the counter while he waits for Sam to finish. 

"What the fuck is that," he asks as soon as Sam walks in the kitchen, hair dripping because he's forgotten his towel upstairs.

"What the fuck's it look like?" Sam asks calmly. He ignores the beer Dean opened for him and snags Dean's instead. He drinks half of it down, then puts it back in Dean's hands and heads straight past him into the room.

"It looks like a goldfish," says Dean. He glares at Sam but Sam doesn't notice, too busy opening cabinet doors. "No cat. No llamas. No canaries. No goldfish either, Sam."

"Sorry," says Sam, and keeps poking around the kitchen.

"No you're not," says Dean, but he wants to know what the fuck Sam's doing now, so he asks. "Okay, what are you doing now?"

"Looking for a mixing bowl. Or the big saucepan."

Dean thinks about telling him that he burnt the big saucepan beyond rescuing last week but decides he'd only get grief for it. "You're not putting a goldfish in a saucepan," he tells Sam straight. "Because we're not keeping a goldfish."

"We are," says Sam. He points. "There's one on the table."

"Very funny. I told you -- "

Sam stands up. "You told me no cats," he says. "I've changed my mind, you're right, no cats."

Dean rolls his eyes. Sam's beer is getting warm on the counter behind him, so he finishes his own and gets started on that one.

"Dean," says Sam. He's using the gentle voice he's defaulted to lately. Dean fucking hates that voice. Sam stands up straight but doesn't move towards him. "It's just a goldfish."

Dean bites down on his first response to that, then his second, then decides the best response of all is just to lift the bottle to his lips again.

"You can laugh at me if I cry when it dies."

"Damn straight," Dean replies, but that stuff stopped being funny a while ago now. He scowls at the bag.

"Then I'll go win another one for you."

"I don't want another one. We aren't going to be here forever," says Dean, because they're not. Nothing lasts and never, ever domestic bliss. "Something'll come along and we'll leave. What are you going to do then?"

"Then I won't get another one," says Sam. "They don't live that long, Dean."

Dean considers this. Sam is holding two of the biggest saucepans by the handles, one in either hand. He looks like someone about to brain Dean, or he would if he wasn't wearing that stupid, hopeful expression.

"Fine," Dean says. He puts Sam's beer down and says, "That's mine now," pointing at it, then goes out of the room to find a container he doesn't mind a goldfish shitting in. 

Sam raises his eyebrows when Dean comes back ten minutes later with one of the fermenting jars they found in the attic when they moved in. "Don't you have other plans for that?"

"I don't think you'll fit in here, Sammy." 

A fermenting jar probably isn't much better for the fish than a saucepan, but it'll do for the moment. They put it on the windowsill in their room and for once Dean wins the toss. He names the goldfish Free Willy, and generously lets Sam bend him over the bed, to make it up to him.

*

Free Willy is still alive when Dean wakes up in the middle of the night with Sam wrapped all tight and sweaty around him. Maybe if they slept in separate beds Dean wouldn't have to wash their sheets so often.

Sam's hair is falling whispily across his nose, fluttering up with every breath he releases. Dean lies and enjoys the thud of Sam's heartbeat in his chest, squints until he's decided he can see it in his neck as well, then gets his hand free and brushes the lock of hair out of Sam's face. He works the rest of his limbs free as best he can, congratulates himself on not waking Sam, and pads around the bed to the window. Their house is in the middle of nowhere but it's cloudy, and he can't see any stars.

Dean eyes the fermenting jar. Sam's right. It's pretty fucking big for one goldfish.

Dean turns around so he can fit comfortably in the chair, wrapping himself up in a stray blanket, and from there watches Sam's chest rise and fall, deep and easy in his sleep.

*

He opens his eyes when Sam presses a kiss to his lips, one hand fitted around the curve of his neck to rub at the kinks that are going to bother him the rest of the day. It's still dark, the hour before dawn.

"You keeping an eye out for him?" says Sam when he pulls back. He's on his knees between Dean's legs, his free hand rubbing up and down Dean's thigh. He nods at the jar on the window ledge. "He's still alive."

"Yeah," says Dean. Grumpily.

Sam looks at him. He runs his tongue over his lips.

Dean waits. 

"Think it's gonna be alive for a while, Dean," says Sam. He stills his hand, but leaves it there on Dean's leg. "You don't need to think about getting a new one yet."

It is way too early in the day for metaphors. Dean opens his mouth to tell Sam that, but Sam tightens his fingers to stop him speaking. "Nothing to worry about."

Sam's hair is a fucking disaster. It kind of hurts Dean to look at it. He's not going to tell Sam that, though, and he's not going to sort it out for him. He catches himself just in time, and puts his hand on Sam's arm instead. Just up from the hand on his leg.

"You keep waiting for something to take us out," Sam says. "But it's not going to, not now. I won't let it."

"You're good," says Dean. "I know, I trained you. But you can't make promises like that, Sam."

"I can promise that I won't let anything take you out. Not without taking me out first. And you won't let that happen." Sam shakes Dean's leg a little. "Both of us or none of us. Let someone else worry about that."

It's an old, old argument. Sam likes to make it a lot, every time he finds Dean like this. Normally he can be convinced to save his speech until daylight, though. Today must be special.

Dean lets Sam wrap them both up under the covers before he opens his mouth again, this time saying it against Sam's collarbone. "All of us."

"What?"

"All of us or none of us. You and me and Free Willy."

Sam doesn't say anything, but he tightens his arms and pushes his nose into Dean's neck to warm it up, and Dean thinks that's answer enough.


End file.
